According to a recent Insurance Bureau of Canada report, new commercial truck drivers with inadequate training are putting the safety of Canada’s roads and highways in jeopardy, validating what we have been saying all along.

Premier, this is the reality: Immigrants are being charged up to $40,000 for training they never receive. Many are simply given a licence and sent on the road, with red tape and green tape on the pedals to indicate stop and go.

Licence testing must be done by the MTO.

When will this government finally do something to protect these workers and all other road users from preventable accidents?

When will you institute company inspections with harsher consequences for employers breaking the law?

The government received a joint health and safety committee recommendation pointing to the failure of the ministry to acknowledge well-known and serious health risks to forest firefighters. Forest firefighters are exposed to silicas, benzines, formaldehyde, poison ivy smoke, carbon monoxide and dump fires riddled with carcinogens. And yet, unbelievably, forest firefighters are told that all they need to protect themselves from toxins is a homemade bandana. Does this government seriously believe this is an acceptable standard of worker health and safety?

Drivers are travelling across the entire province without seeing a single inspection station that is open. While MTO and OPP blitzes have led to charges being laid, drivers need to be stopped earlier and more frequently. The lack of proper training and lax enforcement of truck safety is resulting in horrific crashes and constant highway closures.

We know there is a new super-station opening up on Highway 11/17 in Shuniah, but on other major routes, inspection stations remain closed, as they have been for years.

Will the government finally commit to staffing inspection stations across the province so that the highest possible standard of safety is enforced on our highways?

This question is to the Premier.

Young people are particularly vulnerable to permanent brain damage due to diesel fuel exposure. With young people beginning skilled trades training as early as grade 11, can the Premier explain to parents why the government has not reduced the diesel exposure limits to the level long recommended by health and safety experts?

Mine workers have been lobbying this for years. In fact, members of the United Steelworkers have stickers on their hard hats recommending it be much reduced from the level that the government has recently moved to. For me, particularly knowing how badly WSIB is serving the interests of injured workers, I can’t imagine how parents will feel.

My question is: Why has the ministry not moved the rate down to the recommended level?

Thank you to the member from Mississauga–Malton. I am also very happy to be hearing about skilled-trades opportunities for young people, and for international people interested in becoming permanent residents.

I do worry about worker health and safety, however. We know that workers keep dying at Fiera Foods, we know that young truck drivers are dying on the highways—many of these come here as temporary foreign workers—and we also know that WSIB is not there when workers receive a permanent injury. So what I’m wondering is, what is in the plans? What will this government do to protect the health and well-being—in other words, the safety—of workers, whether Canadian-born or here hoping to become permanent residents, when businesses are warned of inspections before they take place?